I don’t know about all of you, but, this has to be the strangest and most unpredictable DWTS season I’ve ever experienced. First, they announced this lack luster cast. Then many of us we’re pleasantly surprised to find ourselves drawn to them. Then bang, the judges start hitting them where it doesn’t count and giving good scores to those who don’t deserve them and the list goes on. The result: all of these unknown, shocking eliminations. I think it’s safe to say at this point that not one of this Season’s couples are safe no matter how well they dance. I’ll be scared for them all every week from this time forward. 😮

If that’s not all, and some of you have mentioned in our blogs, the producers are now throwing another challenge to the dancers this upcoming week one of which includes practicing to one of their two dances without any music until showtime next Monday. Special thanks to Heidi sending me this interview with Maks from E On-line while I was on a business and shopping run to Colorado yesterday which mentions this new gimmick. What the ?? Can the dancers or us take much more of these so-called “gimmicks”?

What dance are you and Brandy working on for next week?
We’re doing the waltz as our main dance and then there’s this new crazy thing where they’re going to give us the dance after the show tonight but they won’t give us the music. So we’re going to have to prepare a dance without the music and get the music next Monday [during the show] and…we’ll have 20 minutes to prepare our dance.

It seems like the producers are trying to make it really hard on everyone.I’m not really sure if I think it’ll make for great TV. I just think it’s absolutely unnecessary pressure on celebrities that are already under pressure. But I’m not the producer. It’s not my show. What the production doesn’t realize is that it doesn’t make it any easier or harder on the celebrities. It makes it harder for the professionals. It’s really unfair to us because we are doing way too much.

Maks and Brandy talk more on this new gimmick here;

Anyway, to Rick Fox! Many of us are sorry to see him leave which includes all of his fellow dancing competitors. They talk in interviews on him, how they’ve made it this far, as well as a little on their future dances.

I'm a fashion and music fan....and I have always loved dancing too of any kind. Dancing With The Stars seems to have this way of bringing all of those things together. One of my favorite dancing quotes at the moment: "No matter what, nobody can take away the dance you've already had...." ~Gleb Savchenko . For fun music and dance mixes, visit WilUnleashed Soundcloud. To view my photography site, see Lisa Kay Photography.

That this “instant choreography” they are throwing to us is just a thing to justify a dance to an used song.

Follow me: Producers ask couples do an routine that they don’t know wich song will dance to. I don’t think, for example they will give an unconventional song, but a classic one.

Example: Bristol dancing samba (we don’t know if is this rhythm). Producers will never give her a hip hop or disco. They will give a most common song like “Magalenha”, “Mas que nada”, “Hips don’t lie”… a traditional and already used song. I was thinking about this right now…

I don’t really know what the big deal is – this is how normal dance competitions work. You don’t know the music in advance, you only know the approximate tempo.
I can’t see the producers being stupid enough to throw any couple under the bus with a really odd or off-tempo song, so putting together a routine is no more challenging than normal.
Of course, it means they can’t tailor the choreography to specific beats in the song, which means the routines will be a bit more generic. On the upside, it means they can’t add in stupid stuff (monkey suits, doghouses…) and justify it as relating to the song.

I actually think this gimmick sounds really good. I haven’t liked any of the gimmicks so far besides TV theme song week (which was great for some celebs and not for others aka Bristol and Kyle). But this is really a test not only for the celeb but for the pro as well. I agree they are probably going to use recycled songs though. Nonetheless, its going to be a nice curveball for them.

In a normal dance competition, both halves of the couple are pros or amateurs trained specifically for this challenge and well versed in the particular dance style. DWTS is not a normal dance competition. I’m sure that the pros can adapt on the fly, but what about the celebrities? They have ~5 days of training on the style to perform it for the 1st time ever. Now they won’t even be able to rely on musical cues – heck, they may have never even heard the song before. I really feel bad for the female pros – they’ll need to lead without looking like they’re leading. And in general, I’m not sure that the dances will be as good, and some may be complete disasters.

Carlos, I hope that you are right. There needs to be something to reduce the catastrophe potential. I had thought that maybe each couple would get 3-5 songs for practice, and the performance song would be 1 of them. That doesn’t seem to match up with Maks’ comments though.

And I think that Maks is complaining wayyy too much this season. The comment from him in the above article is just another 2 add to his list of complaints this year. He should just get over it already considering he and Brandy are one of the frontrunners this season. I really hope they give him a not-so-good-celebrity next season so he learns to stop complaining.

I think he’s referring to your comment that you don’t see why it’s unfair to anyone. All I think he’s saying that the male pros may actually have an advantage in that they can convey last minute changes by leading. It’s not clear how a female pro can easily do that. I know that they often lead and hide it, but how can they convey actual changes while still making it appear that the man is leading? Carlos, please correct me if I’m totally wrong (and accept my apology). 🙂

Okay, that makes sense to me now. But they will have their music a little bit of time before they dance, not only when they walk out onto the floor. Of course they won’t have much time to practice it. 🙂 I guess the easiest thing to do is choreograph a simple routine that you can just change the tempo on to make it fit the music. The hard part might be figuring out when and how to stop the routine.

I think the instant dance concept is just plain nuts.
Maks is right. The celebs are already feeling a ton of pressure. This type of assignment will push them right over the edge. It is the pro’s job to keep the celebs focused and on schedule. “Good luck” is all I can say, they are going to need it.